


Trying

by Desdimonda



Series: Broken Steps on the Broken Isles - Drabbles and vignettes about Maiev, Illidan and their relationship beneath the shadow of the Legion's invasion on Azeroth and beyond. [8]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Mid relationship, One Shot, Realisations, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 14:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10810926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Desdimonda/pseuds/Desdimonda
Summary: An anon on tumblr messaged me the following message which prompted this piece:"Maiev cannot quite explain, how it happened exactly. She had been their enemy for so long. Their Huntress. Their Keeper. Their Warden. She never meant for it to happen. But then again - looking over the sleeping male next to her, his wings flexing in his slumber - she never meant for a lot of things to happen. Or: how Maiev, out of habit really, corrects the form of a female Illidari once during the demon hunters training exercise and then, somehow, ends up becoming their educator ("Mama"iev)"





	Trying

Maiev ran a finger along his arm, feeling the rough line of scales, of spikes, that ran the curve of his muscle, pushing through the binds he twisted around his forearms - always. What did he hide under there? More scars, more scales, more reminders of the demon within?

Illidan stirred in his sleep, a hand reaching, stretching out over Maiev’s cloak that had been bundled as a makeshift pillow. He was reaching, for her.

But she recoiled, shuffling back, away, away, until his claws, fingertips touched, nothing.

Moments ago, beneath the veil of sleep, she had been there. _There_. She had held his hand; nudged her knee between legs; watched him fall asleep beneath the shadow of a tree at the edge of their camp. She’d felt...peace. The promise of something other than the gnawing, clawing, anger; hatred; pain - at _herself_. At them. At this. At the last _ten thousand years_.

But now? 

Suppressing a shiver, Maiev stood, not daring to look back, and walked to the dwindling campfire, still wearing odd pieces of her armour but for the chest. It had suffered a fracture to the front, and was useless.

She had hoped to find it alone, but Kor’vas saw her before she had the time to turn away. Of course. She was on watch.

Maiev sat by the fire, wordless, Kor’vas’s sightless gaze following, judging, searching. Her hair was down and she felt, bared. No-one saw her like that, but him. 

Him.

Pulling a ribbon from around her wrist, Maiev pulled back her hair, tying it high and tight, staring at the rhythmic wave of the flames; small, dying.

“Can’t sleep?” said Kor’vas, leaning forward on her hand.

“Does it look like it?” said Maiev, not taking her eyes away from the flames. 

Kor’vas smirked. “A simple ‘no’ would have done. But then again, you always have to make a point, don’t you?”

Maiev slowly lowered her arms. “I don’t have to prove myself to you - _any_ of you,” she said, her voice level and low.

Twisting her dagger in-between her hands, Kor’vas raised a brow. “Just because he loves you, doesn’t mean we do.”

Love. 

_Love?_

Maiev stared at her upturned hand, remembering how he had felt beneath her touch; remembering the way she had held him, breathed him, kissed him. Had she... _loved_ him?

Sharply, she looked at Kor’vas, nothing given, and everything hidden. She _hoped_. “Do not speak about what you do not know.”

Kor’vas laughed, twirling the dagger before she sheathed it swiftly and set it on her lap. “In all my time as a Demon Hunter, I think this is the first time I’ve seen him laugh. _Really_ , laugh. And I don’t think it’s because of Khadgar’s bad puns, either.”

Maiev closed her hand, listening. But did she believe?

“But what would I know? I’m just a blind, near demon, idiot child, right?” she said, studying Maiev with her spectral eyes, watching the small nuances of her expression, change. The tilt of her ears; the lift of her tightly knitted brows; lips that parted to speak.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said, hearing the echo of her words from earlier that she thought only Sira heard; that she thought were forgotten - or forgiven. 

“Didn’t mean to say them, or to be heard?” challenged Kor’vas as she popped a berry into her mouth.

Leaning forward, elbows onto her knees, Maiev sighed, wearily. “Both.”

“Uh-huh,” said Kor’vas before she handed out the small wooden bowl of red berries towards the Warden. 

Picking a handful, silently, Maiev rolled them idly in her palm. “We...would be worse of, without you and your Hunters,” she said. Her voice sounded distant, timid almost, and Maiev pressed one of the berries between two fingers, watching the bitter juice spill over  her fingers and long, unkempt claws.

“Is that... _praise_?” teased Kor’vas, eating another berry.

Maiev clenched her hand, squashing the berries before she threw them into the fire, with a hiss. “I’m _trying_.”

“So are we.”

The two sat in silence for a long while, the crackle of the dying fire the only thing they could hear. The stain of the berries reminded Maiev of blood. And she wiped her hand against her leathers, smearing them with streaks of red. 

Staring at her palm, marked, cold, curved atop her knee, she wished she was still there, where he reached, where he wanted, _her_.

“When did you realise he loved me?” she asked, surprising herself at the words; bare, free, falling past her lips, unbidden.

 “When did you?”

Maiev gazed over the fire, beyond, at where he lay, the orange flames casting a gentle glow against the rough, ragged edge of his horns. 

 _Now_.


End file.
